This is the best thing I've read in a while. Thank you for sharing.
I hated it. I actually didn't finish it because it made me so angry. The day I accept progress is a myth is the day I give up on politics. "Progress is a myth" is the first step on the road to despair for me, and I have had to stop myself from taking it.
If progress is a myth, then what is the point of any sort of humanism? Either life is a zero-sum game, and then the only sensible goal would be "more for me", or it's not, and then it makes sense to work for "more for us".
Maybe I'm peculiar, but optimism doesn't make me try less hard. If I knew that the Star Trek future was inevitable, I would work harder for it, not slack off because it was in the bag. I would work harder because whenever things looked bleak in the short run, that as Faulkner once said: "I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail."
I know one day you'll come around.
To adopting the worldview of Paul Ryan? Whose side are you on?
What part strikes you as Ryanesque?
It might be Trump's world, but if we put our minds to it, gosh darn it, we can make it the best of all possible Trump's worlds.
The myth is not the existence or possibility of progress, the myth is that progress is somehow inexorable or inevitable. It's not, not even in the long run. It takes work. We can, and do, sometimes move backwards. On a timescale that can surpass human lifetimes.
I didn't even think that was the interesting part of the article; that's just reality. What I found interesting/helpful was the advice on psychological coping mechanisms.
So we're all depressed because we assumed that everything could only get inexorably better, with no possibility of reversal? Are we all 10 years old?
5: Maybe I didn't get what you were going for in 3.
I agree with Walt here. "Give up belief in human progress" definitely sounds like a cure that's worse than the disease.
I mean, sure, there were some silly ideas about the inevitable perfectibility of humans through Reason back in the 18th century. But I really don't think that excessive 18th century style optimism is much of a problem today.
10: I was teasing you, as though your progress towards my belief system was inevitable.
Embracing ambivalence, paradox, and shades of gray promotes a sense of wholeness and flexibility. We become less outraged when circumstances don't fit within our rigid expectations.It also promotes, as I can attest, indifference, apathy, and ennui.
They exist in the hypothetical, the imaginary. Mindfulness involves shifting our attention - repeatedly, resolutely - back to the present moment.
Which might be a sound coping mechanism. Whereas
We do not know the future. We cannot fully know the impact of any particular action.
is fuck off stupid. We can predict the consequences of actions accurately often enough to make workable plans. For instance, I can predict with reasonable accuracy that a therapist will fuck up if they tackle the history of ideas, and plan to ignore anything they may have to say on matters outside their specialty.
First exit polls show Macron winning with 65%.
Good news out of France thank Dieu
A result that was successfully predicted, the bottomless complexity of the universe notwithstanding.
Ugh, I know this is an epic disaster averted, but who are we kidding, Macron is also the fucking worst.
Can we not hijack a thread that was actually getting a conversation going.
19 True but better the neoliberal than the fascist any day of the fucking week.
20 But this has totally restored my faith in humanity Heebie, better than any therapy.
On the bad side, low turnout, even relative to the first round, and Le Pen getting about double what her father did.
Prose stylings from Dr. Gregory House, MD:
"We're all on that airplane. The seats are uncomfortable,the amenities are kinda crap, and it's a long, long way down."
It was from the soap-opera-star episode. And yea, it's just TV. But the writers sometimes skirted the fundamentally absurdist nature of human existence. Walt, I take your point. But it really is all absurd and random and meaningless. All we can do is, when the baby next to us starts crying, try to amuse him/her a little. Expect to fail, but hey, gotta try.
Nous gagnerons parce que nous sommes plus forts, Heebie.
Macron spokesman says the hack is being investigated, there will be "maybe diplomatic responses".
...Le Pen getting about double what her father did
Anybody want to write this up as "a win for feminism"?
Urple's right in 7, but I don't really see what any of the history stuff has to do with coping. You can probably just read the coping part.
24: I was thinking about an even nerdier TV reference. In Doctor Who, the Master explains that the reason why the Doctor always wins is that he assumes that he's already won and works backward from there. Of course Trump is not a problem we can solve in 40 minutes where we reverse the polarity, but the idea cheers me up.
Spokesman: "France has shown the world that it is possible to do something." See, Heebie, relevant.
You all are the worst. Urple gets me.
You just want enablers for your mushiness and irresponsible construction habits.
IDK, I find this a helpful and realistic article. (Maybe it's because of all the time I've spent in therapy.)
It's true that success, like progress, is not a done deal. We may well not reach the promised land. The arc does not bend toward justice on its own.
It won't bend toward justice UNLESS we put our hands on it and make it bend that way.
This article is about that. Right now in America we've got people in charge who have seized power entirely to make themselves and people like them richer. They have no interest in justice.
So trusting that the arc will bend toward justice, eventually, might be comforting, but we also need to recognize that unless we (all of us who aren't part of Trump's team) put our hands toward that bending, yeah, no, it won't happen.
There's no justice, as Terry Pratchett notes. There's just us.
33: I don't understand that reaction. Before November, did you think that the arc would bend towards justice without anyone doing anything? Surely not.
I have a coping saw, but maybe I'm using it wrong.
34: I did not, Walt.
Previous to the election, I believed pretty much what I believe now. I'm an atheist, and I don't believe in any kind of fate. No one's in charge. Nothing happens unless we make it happen. That's either good news or terrible news, you know, depending on what we make happen.
However, I'm aware that many people do believe in a different sort of world, one in which good is supposed to triumph, because it is (after all!) the good. Let go and let God, that kind of thing.
And -- especially for those people -- this article gives some good advice for how to handle the terrible world we're finding ourselves in. That's my point.
I haven't clicked through, but don't see any grounds to argue with Walt here. Of course progress isn't self-executing. Who on earth thought it was? Neither is resistance.
OK, I see that Delagar has answered me: but isn't the delusion that God will save us more or less just on the other side?
God certainly has a very long track record of letting a whole lot of good people experience a whole lot of suffering.
I have friends, a married couple, who seem to have just discovered what the stakes are in politics. They both seem to be reeling after eight years of low-information good, slightly left-of-center governance. One is furious at everything; the other is terrified. I think this article might be for them.
I am taking the incredibly selfish route to coping here: I am now and likely will be OK. I can try to help where I can for those who will be affected sooner.
40: I think that's legitimately okay. To be clear, I don't think it's selfish. Put on your own oxygen mask first, and all that.
We do what we can, and when we can do more, we do more.
38: I think it's hard for liberals who aren't very politically savvy to see and understand the step back. I think if you look at gay marriage as an example, it looked to low information voters as if the case just happened, our team won at the Supreme Court and it's over. It's like a Cliff Notes where you have a problem and a resolution. Or how MLK, Jr. gave a speech and then LBJ gave African Americans full rights and everything was great. These are stories that folks tell themselves. None really deal with the nonlinear nature of the struggle, and many hinge on a narrative of a hero, not an organized movement with funding and dedicated volunteers and staff. Not God, but not something they feel like they could affect in any way.
I haven't clicked through to the article either, but I assume (hope?) it defines the notion of progress it's working with. I mean, plenty of Republicans/conservatives will tell you that Democrats/liberals are wholly and entirely wrong about pretty much everything (e.g. the 'welfare state' is bad, wrong, doesn't promote economic growth, encourages dependency, blah blah etc.), so they're convinced that Republican/conservative principles put into practice constitute progress.
39: "Theo C. D." would make a good pseud, or something for the next grandkid.
That's in response to the OP's quoted portion
We must understand that the belief in human progress is a myth, with historical and religious context, and it is no longer serving us.
I was a bit bewildered by that, taken flatly, because I'm pretty sure Republicans/conservatives do continue to believe in progress toward perfection. The suggestion that the belief "is no longer serving us" is quite a bizarre proposition, and caused me (briefly) to cast my eyes and mind pretty far afield: what would it be to give up on that notion? Um, I'd have to think.
38: If I understand what you're asking, some people have "God" and some have "fate" and some have platitudes like "the right side of history."
It's all essentially the same thing, which is a coping mechanism that lets people believe everything will work out okay -- that someone or something (greater and wiser than us humans) is in charge and that there is a master plan and none of this is random. So they don't have to know who is really in charge, you know, which is us.
I do understand the need for this. It's what people have instead of Xanax, I guess.
Which is to say that there's what you might call a theory of perfection in play for liberals, and for conservatives. I gather the therapist author is assuming the liberal theory of socio-political perfection (but s/he should say so). And it that's the case, it's not at all clear to me how it's no longer serving us. (Because we're not winning?)
At any rate, serial commenting done!
"...Republicans/conservatives do continue to believe in progress toward perfection"
This doesn't match the Conservatives I know -- but I know mostly Evangelicals, who believe that humans *can't* be made perfect, or even better. We're all sinners, and so on. So the best that can be done is putting rigid social constraints around us, to keep us all in line. (Only Jesus is perfect, and only his grace, et cetera)
It might be different in other places.
Yes, sorry, I should have specified sociopolitical perfection. A notion of the best sort of society to have.
I feel like the article is being unfairly maligned based on heebie's choice of a pull quote.
The truth is, individual psychology is hugely influenced by political realities.
What I like about the article is that it pushes against the idea that an individual's psychological distress must be mainly rooted in that individual's personality structure (or childhood, or etc).
Also, what urple said in 7.
I liked the article, though I think I basically am already where she's encouraging people to go so I didn't find it helpful, exactly. Reassuring, maybe, or supportive.
I feel like people sometimes want me to reassure or be supportive of them, but it takes me a while to figure that out so I'm always seen as unsupportive when really I'm just inattentive.
Sounds like you need more mindfulness, Moby.
I've never see any positive correlation between how much I paid attention and how well things turned out. Except maybe driving.
The day before I read this I had literally sat crying in my therapist's office about the fact that I no longer have any faith in the universe, or confidence that things (in general) will get any better.
In other news, I don't think my new meds are working. Anyone have any experience with MAOIs or transcranial magnetic stimulation?
I actually quit the mindfulness-based stress relief course I was taking because it's not a good idea to take it if you're in the middle of a depressive episode, and I seem to be.
On the "progress is inevitable" thing, I absolutely know people who believe this, and if asked will describe some kind of cohort replacement effect (i.e., racist/homophobic/intolerant types will get old and die, newer generations will be better). They have certainly been taken aback by the election results.
I think cohort replacement is a good reason for optimism: it, too, isn't self-executing --someone has to educate/model for those young folks.
There's been a lot of speculation about how the AHCA vote will harm Republican House members. Good.
I was just thinking about how it'll play in governor's races. If the version that gets signed lets states opt out of important stuff, we'll end up having candidates for governor having to answer the question whether they'll seek a waiver.
This could end up being a big deal in 2018.
Our gov isn't likely to be looking for any waivers, beyond what we already had to get to get Medicaid expansion. So, then, it's a 2020 issue here.
Maybe Illinois ends up an early test?
Sending loads of support, along with a great big cyber-hug, to you, J. Robot.
about how the AHCA vote will harm Republican House members.
There's been a lot of speculation -- and premature exaltation, in my opinion -- about how his AHCA vote might harm our rep, Rodney Frelinghuysen.
My thing is, our only goal now should be to defeat Frelinghuysen at the polls in 2018; and I honestly don't give a flying f**k about any kind of fight for "the soul of the party," the centrists versus the true progressives, or whatever the f**k. If we can come up with a viable candidate who can actually defeat Sir Rodney, I don't care if he or she has two heads, or a criminal record, or whatever: so far as I am concerned, any Dem who can actually beat Rodney will do. He will not be easy to defeat, though. He has the advantages of long incumbency, and is very well-funded indeed.
Carp knows a guy with only three tax liens. He seems great. (I'm kidding, Carp. I've sent him money and will probably send him more.)
Carp knows a guy with only three tax liens.
I don't think I even know a guy with a tax lien. But it's all relative, VW!
There's a difference between knowing everything in the linked post with your head, and knowing it with your gut. Obviously everyone here knows all that stuff intellectually. But some of the more intellectual responses to the link make me think that the point is being missed.
If you'd rather, in the language of Thinking Fast & Slow, we know this stuff with our thinking System 2, but not necessarily with our thinking System 1. Our despair, etc, is System 1, and so she's coaching your System 2 to deal with your System 1. Responding that your System 2 thinks this is Captain Obvious is missing the point.
I honestly don't give a flying f**k about any kind of fight for "the soul of the party," the centrists versus the true progressives, or whatever the f**k
Yeah, the "battle for the soul of the party" stuff (which I only really see online) seems way off-base to me. Different types of candidates can win in different districts, and we need a big tent to build a winning coalition.
You're gut can't "know" things. The microbiome in your gut is simply evolved over your lifetime to reflect certain pieces of knowledge.
If you weren't a c-section, your microbiome started with bacteria picked up during birth. Kids try to put everything in their mouth.
67: There are more bacteria in your gut than there are in the universe, you small-minded sheeperson.
I read the linked piece as mostly innocuous, a few parts I disagreed with, but overall not aimed at me.
Twenty years ago in college I remember being stunned when the professor had us draw the image of the world's progress on a chalkboard. At least three-quarters of the class drew something resembling an upward-trending diagonal line. I was just gobsmacked that they all thought this was even an approximately accurate representation.
Whether you think humans, God, or something else is driving things, who on earth has been on the planet for 18-22 years and thinks that things are just steadily getting better, period? It was bizarre, and all the more so when class discussion demonstrated that they actually did think this.
We must understand that the belief in inevitable human progress is a myth, with historical and religious context, and it is no longer serving us.
I'm pretty sure the author meant to include the bolded word, otherwise her sentence makes little sense.
A big hug if you want one, J, Robot. So sorry to hear you and your care team are back to the drawing board in finding a good solution. All good wishes in finding the right tool soon so you can start making your way back to the life you want.
who on earth has been on the planet for 18-22 years and thinks that things are just steadily getting better, period?
Oh god, tons and tons of people. Most people. Even I'm inclined to cite sheer medical advances and technology and shrug plaintively.
I clicked away on ALEX de Tocqueville.
My closest therapist friend has joked that when Trump said he'd be creating jobs, he should have specified that he meant for therapists.
I have a child in psychiatric crisis now. The political situation factors in. Other kids have felt free to be racist in ways they never were before. But she's safe now and will be home as soon as she can be. I want a world where things get better for her and kids like her, but the work I'm doing even toward the former is maybe not enough. But that's what I've got.
And I'm sorry, J. I so desperately want better things for you too. I hope you find some.
73.1: Seriously, it's not that shitty.
73.3 doesn't mean ONLY politics factors in, but when it becomes clear to a child that things don't necessarily get better and life has eek closer to unbearably painful already (and she's clearly right about that) it's not clear what's left.
My great-uncle's eulogy was about the need for mercy, and I've tried to hold onto the thought of that because I think it's what I've been missing, certainly toward myself but others too
Not that people here are necessarily in a spot where they're looking for something to cope with the anxiety/dread specifically linked to Trump. But the academic/intellectual pooh-poohing of something ministerial is misplaced.
(This is not a continuation of 74. It's to the general tone of the thread, and me trying to talk myself out of being annoyed.)
76: You super don't have to! I don't have any reason to think that you need it! You just happened to weigh in when I was right here, being grumpy about the previous comments. You're one of my favorites, you get a pass on crap like this.
I mean, the other part of the pass is there are lines like "Acknowledge that greed and racism are part of our nation's fabric." you don't say! Maybe if you're going to write an article for straight white cis people, just fucking say so. Because plenty of us didn't find the election outcome surprising and it didn't feel like a betrayal because yeah, we know. (But again, I'm not my best self now. I'm totally down with DBT and glad she's preaching. I just don't think I'll try a third time to get to the end.)
Sending good wishes your way J, Robot. I hope you find a good solution soon.
73.3 Very sorry you're having to deal with that. I wish you much strength, to you and your child in pulling through.
77 The good news from France is therapeutic, heebie.
For real, let me offer a genuine apology to everyone for being crabby. I don't know what's got into me.
Seems to me you're entitled to be a bit cranky when you share an essay that was meaningful/helpful to you and we all react by saying how much we didn't need it. I just reread my comment and it comes off much more irritably than I meant it.
Pax! Peaceful thoughts to everyone, especially Thorn and her child(ren).
81: Too much ideology of inevitable progress, I bet. Have you tried embracing ambiguity and paradox?
81 I'll join you in that.
To be honest, I haven't really recovered from the 1980 presidential election (when I was 22). For years, it looked like we were going to be going in the right direction as a society, and then, wham, the phony with the alternative facts runs away with the thing. (Ketchup as a vegetable! Etc etc)
We get what looks like a reprieve in 1992 -- it's an amazingly lucky break, actually -- only to get totally slammed by the same regression in 1994.
2000 is a different species of infuriating: everyone with a fucking pulse knows what Republican governance is, but then a bunch of people act like they think it'll help them if that's what happens: ho, hum, a million plus people killed, well, at least folks using the appellation Green were spared having to vote for anti-environmentalist Al Gore.
Bad gys winning is a thing that happens. A lot. The answer is to fight on, and tell your friends never ever ever to turn away as if Republican governance won't be that bad.
Time is a circle with no beginning.
heebie: I felt a little bad complaining about the article, since you said it made you feel better. But I'm not having an academic/intellectual reaction. It made me angry enough that I had to stop what I was doing and take a walk until I calmed down.
There is this cynical pomo "Everything always sucks, and nothing good has ever happened" attitude that just sucks the will to act out of me, and it usually comes packaged with "the Enlightenment is a myth" and something about the dialectic. The recommended attitude is just the wrong one for me. For me, beyond optimism is not giving a fuck.
I also have trouble seeing how there is anyone over the age of 20 who thinks everything just gets better, no problem. The worst recession in 75 years just happened a decade ago. Young people seem beaten down about their future career prospects, and have for years now. Before that there was Katrina, the Iraq War, 9/11. The last time anyone could think things would just get better was 1999, which is almost 20 years ago now.
I started this thread from the end, and when I read about all the hostility upthread, I knew I had do restart from the beginning. I am disappointed that this is what passes for hostility nowadays. Unfogged has become old and mellow.
I side with the heebie/urple camp, and couldn't even understand what Walt was talking about until Witt in 71 explained that not everyone was reading the implied "inevitable" in that sentence. I'd argue that in context, the meaning is clear.
Maybe if you're going to write an article for straight white cis people, just fucking say so.
Well yeah, sure, it was written for me and people like me. Isn't everything? I have been stupid this particular way, and while I've outgrown this particular piece of dumbness, it's a relatively recent development. I'm basically the same age as Charley, and as appalled as I was about Reagan, it really wasn't until GWB that I started to get a clue about the contingent nature of the shape and direction of history.
A lot of folks like me took to heart MLK's misguided guidance about the arc of the moral universe -- a bit of sophistry that was also aimed at people like me.
Here's Walt in 34:
Before November, did you think that the arc would bend towards justice without anyone doing anything? Surely not.
There was a time in my life when I thought it was inevitable that people were going to do something. And yes, I understand how silly that is now, but there it is. Among people of good will, I don't think I was that unusual.
I'll leave you with the famous quote by Hunter S. Thompson:
And that, I think, was the handle--that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting--on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. ...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark--that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."
I think "waves" is a good image. I picture waves of shittiness rising and falling. Looking at years and decades, you see decline and fall. However, from the vantage point of centuries, the peaks seem to be lower. There's probably a third-level factor in the waves, crashing down everything. Something like climate change or black death coming down the pike.
For a second there Moby almost sounded optimistic.
We're all doomed, by the equation for my world-shittiness view is very simple. I'm cheerful when equations are simple.
89: As tempting as it is, I think it's problematic to look for laws or patterns in history as a guide to the future. I am reminded of Krugman on Malthus:
Malthus was right about the whole of human history up until his own era.
I am, however, full of trepidation about trying to come up with a Theory of History in a thread in which Von Wafer has appeared. I fearfully await the inevitable smackdown ...
It's just the equation for waves, with A = shittiness.
92: That Malthusian patterns haven't applied for a few hundred years is why I think the trend over centuries is toward lower levels of shittiness.
88: But you thought it back when it was plausible, back when Francis Fukuyama could write a bestselling book about how we were at the end of history. Since then everything has been at best mediocre. Everyone was dissatisfied by the status quo even before the election.
I don't understand how anyone could have interpreted MLK as thinking "and we don't need to do anything. It will all work out in the end." That King, he just sat on his ass assuming civil rights would just happen.
Walt, FWIW, the intellectual vs. gut response that I had wasn't aimed at you. Your response seemed to be pretty gut-driven - that the framework seemed abhorrent to you - which actually didn't rub me the wrong way.
I was more responding to the "ugh, this is like the most basic obvious fluff, maybe if you've never thought about politics before this would help?" vibe.
Which I'm over! I'm not feeling testy about it anymore, just trying to describe.
Like the doctor says when the hernia check is done.
97: Fuck that kind of level-headed response. Fight me. You, Hegel, and Gramsci are worse than Hitler. Mindfulness will lead to a thousand-year Trump Reich.
I don't understand how anyone could have interpreted MLK as thinking "and we don't need to do anything. It will all work out in the end."
I am puzzled that you read the link in the original post, or anybody in this thread, as saying that. I'm not seeing it at all. King was saying that history had a natural bent in large part because people act, and that's how his remarks were universally interpreted.
Think about the phrase "the right side of history." Nobody who uses that phrase is arguing that history has a direction separate from human behavior.
But there are plenty of people who believe that history has a natural direction -- that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice -- because they think human behavior has a natural direction.
I'm sure this has already been said somewhere in this thread, but while almost no one will explicitly claim that progress just inevitably happens by magic, a lot of people sort of implicitly believe it.
Like gay marriage that some one mentioned up thread. There are a lot of people whose take on it is basically "Isn't it great that we all just woke up one day and decided that we were being mean to gay people and that they should be able to marry too? Yay progress!".
87.2: That stuff infuriates me as well.
95: Ah, but it applied for much longer - the entirety of human history to that point. But you know this, and indeed already discussed the ramifications in 89.last.
I don't think people are expecting that progress will happen by magic. I think they're thinking that progress will happen by lots of effort but that somebody else will do the effort.
Which is worse from a moral standpoint, but more plausible from an empirical one.
103: Right. That's my third-order wave. Which makes my theory largely unfalsifiable. Because I also like not being wrong.
104: Even people that put in a great deal of effort often need some kind of faith to help them believe that their effort can or will make a difference.
I really liked that "Between the World and Me" concluded with a discussion of climate change. Coates spent a lot of that book rebutting "moral arc" talk, and I think that's why he closed it with a mostly non-race-specific discussion of climate change.
107: It's like voting. Your contribution probably won't matter but you have to do it anyway.
So based on King's own political activism, what do you think he meant? It's inconceivable to me that he intended that reverses are impossible. You would have to know nothing about Reconstruction and the restoration of white supremacy in the 1870s to think that.
110: See 101, and remember the King quote itself:
"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
Reconstruction, and indeed slavery itself, are covered under the fact that the arc is loooong. And, of course, King himself lived 100 years after the Civil War and he was pretty famously not content with the amount of progress that had been made in that brief period of time.
It's inconceivable to me that he intended that reverses are impossible.
And again: Who is saying this? I totally missed it in the original post, the link, or the thread.
So then what is the myth that existed? You, me, MLK, the Enlightenment, we apparently all agree that reverses are possible.
You don't get bombarded with bland platitudes about enduring because this too shall past and it's always darkest before the dawn, and so on? I feel like it takes active work on my part not to absorb that background radiation.
You don't get bombarded with bland platitudes...?
I don't because I don't have a Facebook account.
113: The myth is that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. There is no such bend.
15/19: What's so bad about Macron, exactly? I see people complaining about him but never with specifics. He was an investment banker, and that's definitely worrisome, but as for actual policy I keep on assuming that he's a centrist neoliberal by French standards, and even though I came down on the anti-neoliberal side during the Democratic primaries I keep circling around to the fact that a centrist by French standards is well to the left of Sanders.
Likewise, Le Pen did better than her father did last time, but still a hell of a lot worse than Trump or Brexit, and she actually underperformed the polls. And voter turnout was a record low for them, but that's still 10 percent higher than America's was. I don't usually argue in favor of optimism but I think it's reasonable to be happy about yesterday's question.
Apologies if the first paragraph here seems naïve. I feel dumb just asking, I'm generally the Francophile in my circle of friends, but I haven't sought out too many details about that election.
118.2: Josh Marshall had a persuasive argument that Trump has actually damaged the far-right everywhere else, because voters in France (Germany, the Netherlands etc) look at him and go "ugh, I don't want to get any of that on me". In which case it is possible, I suppose, that Remain would have won if the referendum had been in June this year rather than June last year.
119: Yeah, a Swiss article I read yesterday explicitly said it was a rejection of the British and American elections.
See, where I live, here among the Evangelicals and the woo-woo leftists, I get a lot -- and I mean a LOT -- of the "Let go and let God" from one side and the "everything works out for the best" from the other.
And as I said above, I get that it's a way of coping with the anxiety of feeling helpless in these dark times; but on the other hand, it can also be a way of feeling like there's no need to take action.
If God, or fate, or the universe, has her hand on the tiller, if there's some great plan, why, you can go on watching Wheel of Fortune or redecorating your living room. No need for *you* to worry about what's happening to civil rights or your nation's laws.
119-120: Trump makes fascism look bad.
I skimmed the article yesterday and my first impression was that it both (a) made some points which were good and important, (b) was stylistically annoying in ways that weren't that important. So, in that context, I'm not surprised that the thread has proceeded the way that it has.
Having read the thread, I'm curious to re-read the article and pay a little more attention to it.
The discussion has been rather fruitless and enervating. Happily, I developed a heuristic to forestall this problem up at 14.
122: At least he makes it look ineffective. The last thing we want to do is make fascists decide they can, if the put in the effort, change the world.
you can go on watching Wheel of Fortune or redecorating your living room
or engaging in fantasy purity politics.
That poll discussed in the WaPo last weeks showed a whole bunch of Obama/Trump voters thought that Trump's policies would be better for the middle class than Clinton's. That she was just in it for the rich. I don't doubt that there were a lot of people who thought this; there were a bunch of places they might have gotten this impression: Trump, the NYT's stories about the Clinton Foundation, even some others.
Re-reading, here's what I'd pull out. It opens with these questions.
A national trauma, just like a personal one, is as disorienting as it is terrifying. It makes us question everything we thought we knew. Two questions must be answered in order to heal:How can we integrate this crisis into our understanding of the world?
What do we do now?
As various people have said, the first is not going to be a challenge for many people; their worldview already includes the possibility of this sort of crisis.
The second is a tricky question for most people because the answer is likely to include some combination of (a) mostly ignore the things that are unlikely to personally affect us and (b) try to figure out how to engage in some sort of collective protest which will hopefully help in the aggregate but is unlikely to make much difference in any particular case.
Here is what she says (the is emphasis in the original which I haven't preserved in the quote),
In response to our current nightmare, we can wish it were different and stay miserable, or we can accept our new world. To be clear, this does not mean condoning what happened. It simply means coming to terms with what is, and with what we cannot control.
Of course, some circumstances can be changed with the right tools. There is much we cannot change, however. We cannot change that Donald Trump was elected. We cannot change that he is (very likely) pathologically narcissistic. We cannot change that many Americans are loyal to him in spite of his hatred, or even because of it. We see more clearly the greed rampant in the GOP establishment. We do well to accept these truths so that we can move forward, rather than paralyzing ourselves with shock and outrage.
You might be wondering, "How can I just accept these things? They are not okay!" Remember that acceptance is not condoning. To accept is not to say, "This is okay." It is to say, "This is what is." Notably, radical acceptance often drops us into a state of grief, as we come to terms with hard realities. We may find ourselves in a place of deep sadness. If so, allow time to feel and honor it.
That seems like good advice which is focused on the first of those two parts; a personal coming to terms, rather than a political response.
She than says
We focus on the work of fighting for human rights and accountability.
How do we do this, practically? The "dialectic" piece of DBT can help us get there.
Great, I'm interested.
Each time the tapes of despair and anger play in your mind, doggedly shift your focus. The mind will wander, again and again. Each time it happens, we notice the anxious thoughts, and shift our focus back. The anxious mind will scream, "How could our President cut Meals on Wheels? What a monster! Those poor people!" Then, shift focus back to the good, "The program has seen a 500% increase in volunteers since the cuts were proposed. Maybe I could get involved!"
You may object, "But I can't just forget all the terrible things going on!" You are right. Mindfulness is not about forgetting. It is about shifting focus to what is most immediate and most helpful. We help no one by staying in our anguish for long. Bernie Sanders said it best: "Despair is not an option."
Hmmm, that seems correct but also verges on platitudes. Let's look at her example.
Here is how this could play out in our minds, using an example from my life recently.
Anxious mind: *reads news about the travel ban* No! Our leaders are disgusting! *imagines crying children separated from their mothers* I can't believe this. *pit in stomach*
Radical acceptance: Yes. This is our reality now. Our nation is rife with corruption and people are hurting. My heart goes out to all those in pain. *pit in stomach softens, feels heavier*
Grief that follows: I need to grieve this. The pain is real. *deep breath, moment of silence*
Mindful attention to the good: How can I support Muslim people in my community? *searches online* There is an Islamic Society nearby. I will contact them. *calls and emails*
...
Despair shouts back: But this is a drop in the bucket compared to what our government is doing! What if it's all useless?
Pessimism is not helpful either. Both optimism and pessimism require future-oriented thinking. They exist in the hypothetical, the imaginary. Mindfulness involves shifting our attention -- repeatedly, resolutely -- back to the present moment. We do not know the future. We cannot fully know the impact of any particular action. We must focus on what we can do, right here and right now. Bring the mind back from its runaway worries and future predictions. Focus that energy on concrete action, and the rewards will feed your soul.
Again, this seems like good practical advice for somebody who would be inclined to talk to a therapist about having difficulty managing their emotional responses to current political events. The practical nature of the advice is about how to manage one's own emotional relationship to the tasks, not on how to maximize results (she explicitly says, "We do good things because they are good, but results are not guaranteed. ")
I am not somebody who is generally an activist, either by temperament or habit, and I appreciate the utility of that advice. I can also understand why somebody for whom the idea of, "How can I support Muslim people in my community?" is not a new thought might roll their eyes slightly and think, "the point of action is not to help you process your guilt, the point is to get something done."
But, as I found myself thinking after the ACLU event, a while back, there is virtue in trying to get new people to show up to things, even if that means having to be patient with their getting up to speed (and I include myself in that; I do not have a history of showing up to things and I went to the ACLU event specifically thinking, "I'm curious, and I want to see what's going on, but I also am not necessarily ready to commit to doing more immediately")
That was overly long, but I hope it's late enough in the thread that nobody will mind.
127, 128: It didn't seem too long, and gets at the parts that I think were successful
119: You can see an obvious collapse in support for AfD in Germany between January and March. I've asked Germans about this, and they attribute it to the sight of a Trump Presidency.
And there hasn't been a collapse in support for Republicans in the U.S. because either Trump's not that bad compared to them or because they haven't noticed shit or because they hate liberals too much to care what Trump does.
There hasn't been a collapse in support for Tories in Britain either. Probably due largely to the Corbyn factor. At least in last weeks local elections UKIP lost all but one of their council seats, but again that's probably because people see the Tpries as doing their job for them.
The lack of collapse in both case is actually probably because of the electoral structure (single-member districts, first-past the post elections).
"..or engaging in fantasy purity politics."
Yes, this. So many of the progressives I know either refused to vote for HRC because she was "just as bad" as the GOP, or else refused to vote at all because "voting was participating in the corrupt system."
Mindfulness will lead to a thousand-year Trump Reich
Mindfulness kampf : a guide to calming the furor within
Ugh, this is depressing: https://www.vox.com/2017/5/8/15577316/minnesota-measles-outbreak-explained
White anti-vaccination activists targetting the Minnesota Somali community with propaganda about autism; result, massive measles outbreak, the biggest in 30 years.
Look on the bright side. People were reaching out to immigrants.
And tomorrow, and the rest of time, that'll be remembered as biological warfare against Muslims.
We have some reprobates in that part of the world, right? Criminal charges for anti-vaxxers. Removal of their children. Make it happen.